I tried searching and browsing, and came up empty. Hopefully somebody can answer this, What's the best settings to import an OBJ exported from Poser into Carrara ? The Carrara dialog box is quite cryptic to me and the manual doesn't really clear things up. In fact if some kind soul could give an overview of how they export an OBJ from poser and then import it into Carrara and then open it in poser, I would be very grateful. The whole "Scaling" bit is something that I wonder about, as when I go into the Vertex modeler to work on a body part, it takes a few minutes to "set" up the room so I can actually see the mesh, as it's so small and there's no keyboard shortcut (that I know of) to automagically Zoom To Selection. TIA

In reverse order, I use whatever scale is comfortable in Carrara, import to Poser using the "send to center" and "percent figure size" options, and deal with re-scaling there. I've done the same with morphs -- Carrara is uncomfortable to work in at Poser scale; the selection handles get offset from the actual selection points, for instance, and the surface display is bad. I've found I get "close enough for jazz" results by scaling up in Carrara until it is a comfortable working size, using the "percent figure size" option when re-importing to Poser, and, in Poser, going to wireframe view and isometric camera and nudging until my morph is exactly on top of the original, un-morphed mesh. I suspect my way causes a little "morph shiver" during animations, but I find it plenty good for stills -- and a lot faster to do than my description might imply. Now, both seperate objects in a scene, and named polymeshes in a single vertex object, will show up as "groups" in Poser. If you assign different textures to your objects, they will also generate Materials in Poser. One thing that may give you screwy results is Carrara will insert extra "g" statements for any Carrara group and for the Carrara universe as well. However. Getting materials in and out in one piece, within a single mesh, I've found astoundingly difficult. Part of the problem may be that even if a Carrara vertex object has different material zones, Carrara won't actually export an obj with materials -- unless you've gone and created specific textures for each of those material entries. For that reason, and for ease in UVmapping and grouping, I've gone to a pattern of creating named polygons for all materials and groups, fixing the mapping and checking the mesh in Poser, then renaming selected groups as materials (aka "usemtl" statements) with a text editor. Carrara of course tosses the materials names anyhow, giving you for instance, for a material that contains both glass and metal parts; "Glass_0, Glass_1, Glass_2." A little renaming makes it easier to work with in Poser. Basically, I've found applying a little text editor on the obj file exported from Carrara solves a lot of issues with grouping and materials. When I have a chance to open both programs I'll see if I can screen-shoot the settings I've been using. I think for most things (modelling something new in Carrara, rigging it in Poser) I just use the defaults on both.

I guess I should have made my reply a question instead. What are you doing with Carrara and Poser? The methods for making morphs, making props, rendering Poser people in Carrara's better render engine, or making new figures/conforming clothing are all different.

Have you read the Transposer Help (in Carrara screen Helps) If you haven't got Transposer (now2) get it NOW. It's about the best money you will ever spend! The Poser/Carrara interrelationship is so great it almost makes you cry with pleasure!

Is there a way in Carrara to increase the scale of the imported model by a percentage of some kind? Then you could do your tweaking of the model and then change the scale value back to its orginal value before exporting it back to Poser.

What I"m doing in Carrara is to import a figure, modify it and create a new figure that I'll import into Poser, give bones and such to inside the Setup Room. Later I'll be just exporting characters of my own creation to Poser and rigging it/them up in there. The surface-point "offset you described, Nomuse, is really annoying. I've found the same thing to happen to "native" Carrara meshes if they are too small. for importing, the settings I've found that works okay is to leave the Auto Postion setting checked. Disable AutoScale and have 1 OBJ unit equal 50 Carrarara Units. Create Carrara Objects as *Vertex Primitives, create single poly mesh. Grouping - Create only one object. This'll import the Poser OBJ in a good size for the Assembly room, allows editing in the Vertex Modeler w/o funkyness. And when exporting from Carrara and importing into Poser, the Poser dialog allows for rescaling back to Poser "size" just like Nomuse said. There's no need to re-scale the object when exporting it from Carrara, at least for my current uses. I have Transposer 2 and poser 6, so until Eovia and Curious Labs work out how to make the two work and play well with each other, it's not really an option. Although there are work-arounds, Transposer 2 and P6 are still funky, as sometimes I'll get one figure and only the props attatched to the second figure (no figure body gets imported by Transposer). Still working on that one, though. Thanks for all the comments and such, it's been a big help.

I have a feeling that Transposer working for Poser6 may be a long, long way off--one reason I have not updated from Poser5-- I hope for many I am wrong. Having Carrara 4Pro I think Poser6 is only duplicating much of what I already have! Anyway, why would anyone need to import into Poser from Carrara???? seems to be a backward approach--Carrara only needs Poser for the figures stuff benefits as it does everything else better!

The following is from a discussion about 3ds and obj on the 3dxtract forum if it helps. A SUMMARY??? (Trying to sort the wheat from the chaff) Both file types are subject to revision though 3ds somewhat less than obj. Both file types have individual features, benefits AND limits! Some Apps better intergrate with one rather than the other. Your App may not have the latest version. Every App may modify its interaction depth to that file type both through import or export mode. So many variables are involved that it is impossible to "blame" either importing or exporting Apps for unsatisfactory end results. Finally, it is important to read Your Apps manual or help files on importing and exporting those individual files. As an example, Carrara4 manual p129, OBJ Export (3ds similar) you "save as" for whole scene and "export" for current sellection and ----Check "Convert proceedural shaders to textures".

bwtr: I need to export from Carrara to Poser to bone/animate the human characters that I created in the Vertex Modeler using Carrara 4Pro. While, render-wise, Carrara is heads&shoulders above Poser, when it comes to character animation, Carrara is sorely lacking, even with the improvements that v4 has. As far as textures goes, I have Baker and hope to put it though some paces in the next couple of weeks. The couple of times that I exported a selection in Carrara as an OBJ and checked the "Convert proceedural shaders to textures" the resulting OBJ would freeze P6. I'm sure it had something to do with the filepaths or something. I feel that converting the proceedural shaders to maps prior to exporting (via Baker) would result in a pretty smooth export and import. From talking with a tech support guy from Curious Labs on Friday, I got the impression that the situation with Transposer/Poser 6 is having some forward movement. Thanks, bwtr, for the latest post -- it did clear up some things for me. The distinction between save as, for entire scenes, and export for the selected object. What I'm really after is a workflow that will enable me to create my own characters in Carrara's Vertex Model (or eventually Hexagon or Silo, if Hex is over priced for my budget), import that character as an OBJ into Poser, create a skeleton-rig for it and then use Transposer to import the animated character(s) into Carrara for rendering. thanks again for the info.

MrMongo. I have used the Carrara Boning (Chapter20 of manual)and found it comparable to Poser-and you can import the BVH files onto them and, with the current C4 morphing. I would have thought Carrara was sufficient--though I am a learner. Some stuff in back issues of the 3dXtract enzyme on the subject too. I have a feeling Hexagon is going to be a must have--have started sweet talking the other half to build up some "credit"!!

Carrara Pro 4 comes with Amapi Designer 7.16 which is great for modeling OBJ objects. Save even more money.

3dXtract Sept 04 Enzyme for C4 bones and skinning.

Attached Link: http://www.crtoons.com/tdworx/priscilla_5mar03.mov

bwtr: I've used boning in Carrara since v3 and it's okay, but there's no 'real' way to save poses other than creating it once in the animation and using copy&paste keyframes to replicate it. The URL is a link to a quicktime movie that I did some time ago using Carrara and bones. For me the value in poser is being able to rig a character and then save poses that can be re-used. I've made more progress in one week with poser and carrara than in a month or so with only Carrara. Also Poser has dynamic cloth and hair, which is a big plus. Shonner: I'm still trying to get a handle on Amapi. In my experience, Amapi's interface gets in the way of me actually doing anything. I'm not giving up on it, but again with the upcoming release of Hex, learning Amapi may be a moot point. Hopefully I'll be able to get the Xtract CD-rom soon and I'll check out the article you mentioned, bwtr.

Cute fishy. I think what puts an application like Carrara well above Poser for purposes of character animation is that many of the modelling stages are themselves animatable. For mechanicals, Carrara has a more complex physics system then Poser, and gives you a more direct way to set mechanical linkages.

Seeing the fish movie you now have NO OPTION but to show us all the better movies made with the Poser combination! (Please.)

(I think the scaling thing with objects being transposed into Carrara from Poser should be automatic with out user interactions.) Its a pain but try building things in Poser then use the defaults save settings from Poser 5 or 6 and import the file into Carrara. It gives you a file that has everything scaled properly. (The two programs are brother and sister. Or visa versa.:) I would like to see them talk to each other with out me messing things up.)p

Attached Link: http://www.crtoons.com/dmc/main.html

Now that I have Hexagon (the $99 price was what I had been hoping for), I'll probably model in it, import the OBJ into Poser and then use Transposer to port it all into Carrara for rendering. As far as scaling goes, glought, by trial and error I hope to be able to model the object in Hex and then when importing into Poser use the "figure height" option to get the object scaled correctly. I'm very close to actually figuring out how to make it work and get consistent results. As soon as there's animations that I feel okay about posting, they'll be up here. Right now it's just at an experimental stage. It's kind of ironic, that I don't concider myself an animator, I just want to use 3D to create comic art for my stories. The URL that's linked here is for a weekly comic strip that's currently on hiatus while I scope out this whole 3D/carrara/poser thang. I would love to see those characters in a 3D enviroment... Nomuse, while Carrara's physics engine is better than Poser, Poser does have cloth (soft body) dynamics and strand based hair systems. Even though they're processor-intensive, the final result is worth it. One other reason why I choose poser is that I can create a base (nude) character and then design clothes and costuming for him/her/it and have a wardrobe that can be used at a fraction of the time it would take me to do the same just using Carrara alone. Let's say my superhero character, AstroGal has a costume and normal street clothes that she would wear in her civilian ID. I would have to not only bone each as a separate object, but would also have to re-do the bone influences and some of the morphs mostly for the clothing. With Poser all that is mostly avoided. And having parameter dials so I can just "dial" up a pose, save it and re-use it later, same with materials. Again, with Carrara, that would be very time consuming. The fish animation took me the better part of a month to animate (using Carrara 3 and using only bones for movement). The ability to use Poser's magnets and morph tools, the options open for unique characters and such are wide open. Didn't mean to write a novel here, hope it gave some insight to the decision making process that lead to my current workflow. Oh, glought --If Poser and Carrara are brother and sister, does that make Metacreations Darth Vader? ;D

Just had to do a correction of a mesh I'd already installed into Poser -- thought I'd screen-shoot the settings I use from Poser4 to Carrara3 to fix a mesh problem, then back to Poser4.

One important note; despite what the Carrara checkboxes say about materials, it will mess them up bad. In the case of this object, a single-group prop with a dozen different materials, I used find-and-replace in a text editor to turn all the "usemtl" statements into "g" statements. Once it was fixed up, I just reversed the find-and-replace.

Nice screen cap-mini tute, Nomuse! Thanks for posting it. It helped me out.